Take them to the church parking lot! Advent 2012

“Take them to the church parking lot,” I instructed my husband. This I directed as both my teenage daughters are learning to drive. One is learning a year later than usual, the other a year earlier than usual. So their driving instructions are overlapping. Time and again I have heard many other parents and kids in our parish say they’ve used the church parking lot as their beginning driving course. As my cousin, who lives in Kirkland said, “Is it any wonder we use the church parking lot?” I jokingly told her that, as parents, we use the church parking lot because it’s as close as we can get to God in that phase of our children’s lives to remind us that all things are possible through God. But it’s really not a joke. We are our children’s first instructors in everything. The church is one of the first places we take them in public, the place where we introduce them to God, and the place where we teach them how to grow in God. Time and again we “go to the church parking lot.” When my children were little, I thought it was the hardest job I’d ever have. Then they became teens and the real work began. Don’t get me wrong, as children go I’ve really lucked out. They are good students, good people and so far have not caused an exorbitant amount of drama in our lives. But the thing about teens; the thing that makes them so much harder, is with a toddler what you see is what you get, with a teen it’s what you don’t see or hear that you have to pay attention to. Not that they are sneaky, but their developing minds take them to the most vulnerable places in this stage of their lives. When we are teaching them to drive, we teach them to look at what they can’t see: look ahead to what is in front of them in the distance, to possibilities of mishap, and to be careful going into the blind corner. If you teach your child to only look at the light pole in the parking lot, they will hit the light pole. If you teach them to look at all the open space of the empty parking lot, they will steer around the pole. Life is much like driving. We have to look ahead to what is in front of us, avoid temptation, and be careful taking blind corners which may lead to temptation. The Lord even gives us more than one road and lets us decide which one to take. He encourages us to steer around the light pole, but if we hit the light pole, he does not abandon us; just as we would not abandoned our children if they hit the light pole. We may chastise, but then we will teach them to look at the open space and show them once again how to steer around the pole. They will learn to steer around the pole, just as we adults have learned and are still learning to steer through our lives in the way in which God asks us. All things are possible through God. Is it any wonder we take them to the church parking lot?